Working conditions, but especially the hardness of the work in the colony, caused a high number of accidents and deaths, calculated already at 391 after the first few months of the workers’ arrival in Eritrea.

Numerous violent protests broke out in the various sites where they were employed, because of the working conditions and also because of the dire living conditions; a good number of workers deserted, while others, who were sick or declared unfit for work, were repatriated; in July 1935, 2,877 workers out of the 22,783 who had arrived by that point had already been repatriated.

The result of these negative events produced a difference in the labour policy and recruitment of Italian workers. They were also a consequence of the state of worker unrest and therefore of the need to regulate a sector that might lead the colony into a state of profound instability.

In the main, the measures put in place were included in the nationalisation of the economy that characterised the régime’s economic policy as well as in the application of corporative principles also to the colony. Besides the Colonial Government, the main actor of this policy was the National Fascist Party.

The change in labour dynamics took place through a regulation that gave responsibility for regulating labour relations to certain bodies that were all set up in 1935. First of all, the workers’ office was established, with Lieutenant Colonel Guido Battaglini in charge of it, and answering to the High Commissioner for Italian East Africa, General Emilio De Bono.

The labour office was set up in the Eritrea Fascist Federation, with the task of checking all employers, for whom enrolment in this body was compulsory; the office issued the employee record cards necessary for each employer to take on employees in the colony.

On the workforce front, the Commissariat delegation for colonisation and internal migration was established in Eritrea, with the task of providing public records of the workforce in the colony, controlling relations with employers and suppliers of work, looking after the movement of workers from one firm to another and the placement of unemployed workforce, as well as the movement of workforce to and from Italy.

The Commissariat also issued workers with a labour card to replace the old employee record card. Overall, the project was aimed at controlling totally or managing directly the mediation between labour supply and demand.

At grass‐roots level, and with a decidedly more immediate impact, the main measure to calm the state of unrest was the militarisation of the working masses, arranged in ‘workers’ centuries’, under the command of the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (MVSN, Voluntary Militia for National Security).

The measure, justified by the need to assist through the constructions that carried on behind the lines for soldiers occupied in military actions, complied above all with the requirement, as Battaglini himself stated, to ‘form a homogeneous mass of workers who best respond to the need for order and discipline’.

Is it just me, or does this sound kind of creepy?

Workers were thus subjected to a detailed scrutiny from the point of view of loyalty to Fascism, and from the technical and health points of view. MVSN and Commissioners for Migrations operated the recruitment and fulfilled their function as intermediaries, in Italy, in the prefectures and the Fascist federations.

Those selected were sent to the ‘workers’ departments’ in the seaport cities of Trieste, Genoa and Naples where they were received by functionaries of the Commissariat for Migrations who presided over all the operations of billeting, equipping and embarkation.

Alongside the ‘workers’ departments’, there were also units of workers militarily placed in the so‐called ‘centuries of workers of the Military Engineers’, whose work was used above all for public works of a strategic nature.

The Ministry for the Colonies supported the organisation of these departments in Italy and in Africa regarding the engagement, selection, embarkation and organised the constitution of the legions and cohorts, sanitary and religious welfare, as well as the organisation of centres for concentrating and clearing workers once they arrived in Africa.

The set of measures laid down by the Government to discipline the workforce and on the whole to manage the entire area of labour relations did not prevent the rise of speculative behaviour, to the detriment of workers.

In December 1938, the labour office of the Fascist Federation in Eritrea highlighted the increase in worker unemployment in the building sector, whose main cause, according to the author of the report, was to be found in a contracts system that was corrupted by ‘relationships, recommendations and intrigues’, allowing entrepreneurs who were without the necessary skills to gain contracts.

In this context, there were also ‘speculators in human flesh’; the civil servant referred to ‘Not infrequent cases of workers who arrived in the territory of the Empire with contracts of engagement from firms that have never worked there’. Just three years after the inauguration of the ‘empire of labour’, as Locatelli stresses, the [Fascist] colonies in East Africa had been transformed into the ‘Empire of Unemployment’.

Heh.

It is difficult to form a judgement on the labour policies that characterised the Fascist colonial model, in particular, given the relatively brief length of the Fascist colonial experiment. For this, ‘empire of labour’ initiative to have met with success would have required a high level of public spending which the [Fascist] State could ill afford given the pitiful state of its coffers.

Although the author does not comment on it, the ‘pitiful state of its coffers’ likely had a lot to do with the economy’s transition to total war, which was itself the Fascist bourgeoisie’s gamble to multiply its resources.

Thus, it was perhaps inevitable that the grand project of importing Italian labour into the colony was soon abandoned, spending on public works was reduced, and emphasis was placed on the agricultural development of Italian East Africa for capitalist gain.

[…]

The Fascist régime soon became wary of the potentially disruptive effect of the presence of numerous jobless Italian labourers in the colonies. It therefore sought to establish tight control over and a drastic reduction in labour recruitment. Joblessness, and vagrancy that came with it, was the result of the lack of capital investment in the local economy.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

This is an excellent paper for any scientific socialists interested in focusing on capitalism in decay. It is only fifteen pages long (excluding the preface), so it’s easy to fit into your schedule.